Yes, America Still Needs Unions

Good article.

Behind the vague notion that unions are somehow obsolete is the suggestion that workers — and their families — are amply protected by the law’s provisions prohibiting child labor and mandating minimum wages, safe working conditions, overtime pay and all the other standards that we now take for granted.

But if you listen carefully to “conservatives” of the ilk of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and billionaire financier David Koch, you’ll learn that they want to do away with most if not all of those advances, hard won by the labor movement and its allies over the past century. Their core belief is that the state should never interfere with capital — and therefore every law defending workers or consumers is a constitutional abomination. Their ultimate project is to return this country to the absolute dominion of the wealthy that existed before the rise of the Progressive Movement and the New Deal.